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sidharthvardhan 's review for:
The Hero with a Thousand Faces: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks
by Joseph Campbell
There is a Hindi saying that can be translated to effect that a poet can reach where sun won't - to show that there imagination is not limited like reality. While that may be so, the reach of imagination too is limited by limitations of mind using it. While imagining stuff, Human mind must work with its content - whether it be content from lived experience or something innate. Neither of those sources are unlimited. It must he therefore possible that all we do imagine can be limited to a few elements dressed differently.
And while some individuals might be able to imagine things undreamed of before; very nature of human language ensure that such fantastic ideas just can't be explained - because language itself is a set of symbols already agreed upon to represent predefined concepts ( as Borges points out in 'Aleph', a short story where he illustrates it rather beautifully). When Einstein gave theory of relativity, very few people on planet could grasp it; within a few years, the language to explain it was developed and anyone with a university degree in Physics understood it. Now just imagine what it would have been like had someone discovered same theory a century before Einstein. He just won't have language enough to start to explain it and probably would have been called mad.
Now myths are by nature very stories that almost an entire population not only understands but can also relate to - that is, they are stories that can make it to collective consciousness of whole community. This gives a space to a very small circle of ideas - not only are truly fantastic flights of human imagination but also other less relatable stories are unable to make the cut. Only stories that are relatable enough to generations of population to make them tell and retell are able to become myths.
Campbell picks up a few elements - initiation ceremonies, hero myth, creation myths, destruction myths, the mother figure, the father figure, the teacher figure, the saint figure etc and tries to explain that all myths of the world can be explained through these elements.
When I say 'world' above I mean it - he has studied myths from all the continents and countries; a rather herculean amount (intended). The very number of those that get mentioned in this book alone is impressive by all standards.
Given that there is a very strong relationship between myths and literature (literature really seems to be natural successor of mythology. Ancient Roman's and Greeks explained themselves and their ways by their myths. At begining of 20th century Russians explained themselves via Dostovesky and Tolstoy. The teenagers of beginning of 21st century English wold will tell you which house of Hogwarts school they belong to.); those patterns can be extended to literature too. Rabbit running down the hole is hero's call to another world for Alice, the play 'Hamlet' is mostly about its hero's struggle to choose between life he desires and life he is duty bound to live and Dumbledore is wise old man of Hero myth to Harry Potter.
That said Campbell never suggested that the story of any single mythological hero must through all those stages he mentioned. Most stories pass through some of them at best. That's right as well. The stages aren't so much stages that must follow one another in pre-defined routine as a list of elements that can be used in creating stories. Even one or two elements are enough. Kafka's The Castle for example completely ignores childhood or past of its hero.
Yet, if I am to believe some of the reviews written here - there are writers, including ones at Disney, trying hard to create stories with all the stages covered in their stories. And that's just really sad. This book is a very useful tool for Postmortem analysis of stories already written but it's a terrible guide (perhaps because it was never meant to) toward creating new stories and forcing them in directions that will just ruin them. Otherwise you are repeating just a single pattern over and over again. That's probably why I can't watch too many of Disney movies at once - the same introduction, conflict, resolution, happily ever after routines at repeat .... or maybe, who would have thought! I grew up. Highly doubt that last mentioned possibility though.
And while some individuals might be able to imagine things undreamed of before; very nature of human language ensure that such fantastic ideas just can't be explained - because language itself is a set of symbols already agreed upon to represent predefined concepts ( as Borges points out in 'Aleph', a short story where he illustrates it rather beautifully). When Einstein gave theory of relativity, very few people on planet could grasp it; within a few years, the language to explain it was developed and anyone with a university degree in Physics understood it. Now just imagine what it would have been like had someone discovered same theory a century before Einstein. He just won't have language enough to start to explain it and probably would have been called mad.
Now myths are by nature very stories that almost an entire population not only understands but can also relate to - that is, they are stories that can make it to collective consciousness of whole community. This gives a space to a very small circle of ideas - not only are truly fantastic flights of human imagination but also other less relatable stories are unable to make the cut. Only stories that are relatable enough to generations of population to make them tell and retell are able to become myths.
Campbell picks up a few elements - initiation ceremonies, hero myth, creation myths, destruction myths, the mother figure, the father figure, the teacher figure, the saint figure etc and tries to explain that all myths of the world can be explained through these elements.
When I say 'world' above I mean it - he has studied myths from all the continents and countries; a rather herculean amount (intended). The very number of those that get mentioned in this book alone is impressive by all standards.
Given that there is a very strong relationship between myths and literature (literature really seems to be natural successor of mythology. Ancient Roman's and Greeks explained themselves and their ways by their myths. At begining of 20th century Russians explained themselves via Dostovesky and Tolstoy. The teenagers of beginning of 21st century English wold will tell you which house of Hogwarts school they belong to.); those patterns can be extended to literature too. Rabbit running down the hole is hero's call to another world for Alice, the play 'Hamlet' is mostly about its hero's struggle to choose between life he desires and life he is duty bound to live and Dumbledore is wise old man of Hero myth to Harry Potter.
That said Campbell never suggested that the story of any single mythological hero must through all those stages he mentioned. Most stories pass through some of them at best. That's right as well. The stages aren't so much stages that must follow one another in pre-defined routine as a list of elements that can be used in creating stories. Even one or two elements are enough. Kafka's The Castle for example completely ignores childhood or past of its hero.
Yet, if I am to believe some of the reviews written here - there are writers, including ones at Disney, trying hard to create stories with all the stages covered in their stories. And that's just really sad. This book is a very useful tool for Postmortem analysis of stories already written but it's a terrible guide (perhaps because it was never meant to) toward creating new stories and forcing them in directions that will just ruin them. Otherwise you are repeating just a single pattern over and over again. That's probably why I can't watch too many of Disney movies at once - the same introduction, conflict, resolution, happily ever after routines at repeat .... or maybe, who would have thought! I grew up. Highly doubt that last mentioned possibility though.